will be to the end of time, inferior to the white race and, therefore, doomed to subjection; but she is happier than she would be in any other condition, just because it is the law of her nature....

What do the leaders of the woman’s rights convention want?  They want to vote and to hustle with the rowdies at the polls.  They want to be members of Congress, and in the heat of debate subject themselves to coarse jests and indecent language like that of Rev. Mr. Hatch.  They want to fill all other posts which men are ambitious to occupy, to be lawyers, doctors, captains of vessels and generals in the field.  How funny it would sound in the newspapers that Lucy Stone, pleading a cause, took suddenly ill in the pains of parturition and perhaps gave birth to a fine bouncing boy in court!  Or that Rev. Antoinette Brown was arrested in the pulpit in the middle of her sermon from the same cause, and presented a “pledge” to her husband and the congregation; or that Dr. Harriot K. Hunt, while attending a gentleman patient for a fit of the gout or fistula in ano found it necessary to send for a doctor, there and then, and to be delivered of a man or woman child—­perhaps twins.[16] A similar event might happen on the floor of Congress, in a storm at sea or in the raging tempest of battle, and then what is to become of the woman legislator?

For months after this convention the discussions and controversies were kept up through press and pulpit.  The clergymen in Syracuse and surrounding towns rang the changes on the cry of “infidel” as the surest way of neutralizing its influence.  Rev. Byron Sunderland, a Congregational minister of Syracuse and afterwards chaplain of the United States Senate, preached a sermon on the “Bloomer Convention.”  Rev. Ashley, of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Syracuse, also preached a sermon against equality for woman, which was put into pamphlet form and scattered throughout the State.  It called forth many protests, some from the women of his own church.  The clergymen selected the Star, the most disreputable paper in the city, for the publication of their articles.  Rev. Sunderland was ably answered by Matilda Joslyn Gage over the signature of “M.” and replied in the Star:  “If the author should turn out to be a man, I should have no objection to point out his inaccuracies through your columns, but if the writer is a lady, why, really, I don’t know what I shall do.  If I thought she would consent to a personal interview, I should like to see her.”  Some man, signing himself “A Reader,” having criticised him in a perfectly respectful manner for making the above distinction, the reverend gentleman replied to him through the Star:  “His impertinence is quite characteristic.  He probably knows as much about the Bible as a wild ass’ colt, and is requested at this time to keep a proper distance.  When a body is trying to find out and pay attention to a lady, it is not good manners for ’A Reader’ to be thrust in between us.”  In all the speeches and articles in favor of woman’s rights there was not one which was not modest, temperate and dignified.  Almost without exception those in opposition were vulgar, intemperate and abusive.